Intense debates in recent decades have provoked major new directions in Marxist theory. Earlier reductionist notions of knowledge, dialectics, contradiction, class, and capitalism have been challenged and profoundly transformed. Economic determinism has given way to new kinds of philosophic, social, and economic analysis such as the one Resnick and Wolff here develop around overdeterminism. Showing that Lenin, Lukacs, Gramsci, Mao, and Althusser contributed concepts of knowledge, class, and society that can radically alter traditional dialectical materialism, the authors demonstrate how this alteration also transforms Marxist economic theory. The dramatic result is a new Marxian theory, a new analysis of class, enterprise, and state.

"Mike Wayne’s introduction is one of the highlights of the book. Wayne summarises many of the key Marxist debates but takes positions. He argues against the pessimism of even soft versions of postmodernism and challenges the once fashionable post-structuralists who argued that texts write themselves, that cultural products are shaped unconsciously by institutions, history, subconscious desires and so on. As he says, ‘While the dominant version of authorship had rightly been taken to task, we cannot do without some sense of agency, collective and individual… There is no reason to suppose that authors of cultural texts are any less able to consciously shape meaning than academics.’"

This 248-page book uses text and comics to explain in simple terms what capitalism is, how it works, why it’s irredeemable, and what we can do to end it. Oppression, ecocide, inequality, and exploitation can’t be voted away or escaped. We can’t get rid of them through consumer or lifestyle choices. If you really want to end the atrocities, you need to join the worldwide fight against capitalism!

Part 1 of the book explains the economic mechanisms of capitalism, and why the growth imperative is built into it. Part 2 explains the kind of organizations we need to build and support, in order to have a fighting chance against this ruthless global system.

Throughout, cartoons make the points even more clear (and might make you laugh as well). (Please note: the cartoons in the print version are in black and white).

"Focusing on Marxist thought in particular, Introducing Marxism gives an overview of the historical development of Marxism, also using the words and ideas of important thinkers. To establish the importance of Marx, the book begins with the publication of one his most well-known works – The Communist Manifesto, stating that “the Manifesto left an indelible mark on human progress and still today forms the basis for a system of political beliefs that motivates millions.” (4) Following a brief account of Marx’s life, which highlights his early passion for philosophy, his life as a political agitator, and the importance of his friendship with Friedrich Engels, Introducing Marxism looks at Marx’s philosophical, economic, and political theories, including dialectical materialism, surplus value, and class struggle."

In August 1953, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency orchestrated the
swift overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected leader and installed
Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi in his place. Over the next twenty-six years,
the United States backed the unpopular, authoritarian shah and his
secret police; in exchange, it reaped a share of Iran’s oil wealth and
became a key player in this volatile region.

The blowback was
almost inevitable, as this new and revealing history of the coup and its
consequences shows. When the 1979 Iranian Revolution deposed the shah
and replaced his puppet government with a radical Islamic republic under
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the shift reverberated throughout the
Middle East and the world, casting a long, dark shadow over U.S.-Iran
relations that extends to the present day.

In this authoritative
new history of the coup and its aftermath, noted Iran scholar Ervand
Abrahamian uncovers little-known documents that challenge conventional
interpretations and also sheds new light on how the American role in the
coup influenced U.S.-Iranian relations, both past and present. Drawing
from the hitherto closed archives of British Petroleum, the Foreign
Office, and the U.S. State Department, as well as from Iranian memoirs
and published interviews, Abrahamian’s riveting account of this key
historical event will change America’s understanding of a crucial
turning point in modern U.S.-Iranian relations.

Trotsky was a hero to some, a ruthless demon to others. To Stalin, he was such a threat that he warranted murder by pickax. This polarizing figure set up a world conflict that lasted through the twentieth century, and in Trotsky: A Graphic Biography, the renowned comic artist Rick Geary uses his distinct style to depict the stark reality of the man and his times. Trotsky’s life becomes a guide to the creation of the Soviet Union, the horrors of World War I, and the establishment of international communism as he, Lenin, and their fellow Bolsheviks rise from persecution and a life underground to the height of political power. Ranging from his boyhood in the Ukraine to his fallout with Stalin and his moonlight romance with Frida Kahlo, Trotsky is a stunning look at one of the twentieth century’s most important thinkers and the far-reaching political trends that he launched.

Whether calling for an end to the capitalist system, addressing the crowds after the Russian Revolution, or attacking Stalin during his years of exile, Trotsky's speeches give an extraordinary insight into a man whose words and actions determined the fates of millions. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.

Freudianism is a major icon in the history of ideas, independently rich and suggestive today both for psychoanalysis and for theories of language. It offers critical insights whose recognition demands a change in the manner in which the fundamental principles of both psychoanalysis and linguistic theory are understood. Volosinov went to the root of Freud's theory adn method, arguing that what is for him the central concept of psychoanalysis, "the unconscious," was a fiction. He argued that the phenomena that were taken by Freud as evidence for "the unconscious" constituted instead an aspect of "the conscious," albeit one with a person's "official conscious."

For Volosinov, "the conscious" was a monologue, a use of language, "inner speech" as he called it. As such, the conscious participated in all of the properties of language, particularly, for Volosinov, its social essence. This type of argumentation stood behind Volosinov's charge that Freudianism presented humans in an inherently false, individualistic, asocial, and ahistorical setting.

The theory of crisis has always played a central role within Marxism,
and yet has been one of its weakest elements. Simon Clarke's important
new book provides the first systematic account of Marx's own writings on
crisis, examining the theory within the context of Marx's critique of
political economy and of the dynamics of capitalism. The book
concentrates on the scientific interpretation and evaluation of the
theory of crisis, and will be of interest to mainstream economists, as
well as to sociologists, political scientists and students of Marx and
Marxism.

Saturday, August 30, 2014

On behalf of the Department
of Philosophy, University of Helsinki, it is a great honour for me to open the
Symposium on Evald Ilyenkov. The Symposium is a joint project of the Department
of Philosophy (Faculty of Arts), the Center for Activity Theory and Developmental
Work Research (Faculty of Education), and the Alexander Institute. It is thus
a multidisciplinary enterprise in a positive sense. The main effort in planning
and organizing the Symposiurn has been made by Dr. Vesa Oittinen to whom we
are all most grateful.

Evald
Ilyenkov was born in Smolensk in 1924. He started his studies at the Institute
of History, Philosophy and Literature in the University of Moscow. After the
World War he continued his studies and defended in 1953 his candidate thesis
on the questions of dialectical logic in Marx's economic works. From 1953 to
his untimely death in 1979 he worked at the Institute of Philosophy in the Academy
of Science of the Soviet Union.

Ilyenkov's study of the dialectics
of abstract and concrete in Marx's Capital appeared in 1960. Combining
his interest in the history of philosophy with contemporary debates, he published
in 1968 his doctoral dissertation on “the question of the nature of thought”.

Ilyenkov's book on Dialectical
Logic appeared in Russian in 1974, and as an English translation in 1977. In
this work, he tried to combine the Marxist‑Leninist theory of knowledge
with methodological questions about special scientific disciplines. In his posthumous
work, he discussed Lenin's conception of materialist dialectics.

Ilyenkov's works had a profound
impact on Soviet philosophy and his studies influenced also a generation of
Western Marxism. Today Ilyenkov would be 75 years old. His voluntary death already
for twenty years ago prevented him from seeing the decline of Soviet Union,
followed in the Western Marxism by the flight back to historical studies in
Hegel and eventually to disappointed postmodernism. I will not make any guess
at the judgment that Ilyenkov might have given about the present state of the
world. But during this conference we shall hearseveral assessments of
the significance of his work and its continuing relevance. I am very impressed
by the programme which includes papers both by Ilyenkov's close friends, his
followers in the study of human actions, and his admirers in contemporary theories
of language, semiotics, and aesthetics.

Coming myself from the Anglo‑Saxon
tradition of analytic philosophy, I should like to make a personal remark. In
the late 1970s I read an English translation of Ilyenkov's article The Concept
of the Ideal, which I found strikingly similar to Karl Popper's conception
of the World 3 of human social constructions. In 1981 I read a Finnish translation
of Ilyenkov's essay on the genesis of human personality through concrete action
and interaction with the material and social environments. Both articles defend
very interesting views which are materialistic in an enlightened way but at
the same time critical of vulgar interpretations of materialism. Ilyenkov's
views on the development of human personality continued the great tradition
of cognitive psychology in the Soviet Union. One can understand that his independent
views gave emphasis and a voice to ideas that were not very fashionable in the
Soviet philosophy in the 1970s but make him a most interesting object of study
among contemporary philosophers and psychologists.

More generally, when the new
Millennium is starting, it will be worthwhile and rewarding to assess and re‑evaluate
the achievements of philosophers and psychologists who worked in the tradition
of Marxist dialectics both in the Soviet Union and other countries. It is no
doubt that their publications contain parts that strike us as dogmatic errors.
But just like in the study of medieval philosophy, we are now able to distinguish
the genuine philosophical ideas from the particular theologically or politically
correct form in which they were dressed in the historical context. The symposium
on Evald Ilyenkov is an example of such efforts of reconsidering the history
of contemporary philosophy.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, video games are an
integral part of global media culture, rivaling Hollywood in revenue and
influence. No longer confined to a subculture of adolescent males,
video games today are played by adults around the world. At the same
time, video games have become major sites of corporate exploitation and
military recruitment.In Games of Empire, Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig
de Peuter offer a radical political critique of such video games and
virtual environments as Second Life, World of Warcraft, and Grand Theft
Auto, analyzing them as the exemplary media of Empire, the
twenty-first-century hypercapitalist complex theorized by Michael Hardt
and Antonio Negri. The authors trace the ascent of virtual gaming,
assess its impact on creators and players alike, and delineate the
relationships between games and reality, body and avatar, screen and
street.Games of Empire forcefully connects video games to real-world
concerns about globalization, militarism, and exploitation, from the
horrors of African mines and Indian e-waste sites that underlie the
entire industry, the role of labor in commercial game development, and
the synergy between military simulation software and the battlefields of
Iraq and Afghanistan exemplified by Full Spectrum Warrior to the
substantial virtual economies surrounding World of Warcraft, the urban
neoliberalism made playable in Grand Theft Auto, and the emergence of an
alternative game culture through activist games and open-source game
development.Rejecting both moral panic and glib enthusiasm, Games of
Empire demonstrates how virtual games crystallize the cultural,
political, and economic forces of global capital, while also providing a
means of resisting them.

Thursday, August 28, 2014

This volume contains the first complete
translations of Wilhelm Reich’s writings from his Marxist period. Reich,
who died in 1957, had a career with a single goal: to find ways of
relieving human suffering. And the same curiosity and courage that led
him from medical school to join the early pioneers of Freudian
psychoanalysis, and then to some of the most controversial work of this
century—his development of the theory of the orgone—led him also, at one
period of his life, to become a radical socialist.
The renewed
interest in Reich’s Marxist writings, and particularly in his notions
about sexual and political liberation, follows the radical critiques of
Herbert Marcuse, Frantz Fanon and Paul Goodman, the political protest
movements toward personal liberation in the present decade.

The authors examine the nature of the relationship between social
science and philosophy and address the sort of work social science
should do, and the role and sorts of claims that an accompanying
philosophy should engage in. In particular, the authors reintroduce the
question of ontology, an area long overlooked by philosophers of social
science, and present a cricital engagement with the work of Roy Bhaskar.
The book argues against the excesses of philosophising and commits
itself to a philosophical approach more deeply grounded in the social
sciences.

Hegemony: A Realist Analysis is a new and original approach to this
important concept. It presents a theoretical history of the use of
hegemony in a range of work starting with a discussion of Gramsci and
Russian Marxism and going on to look at more recent applications. It
examines the current debates and discusses the new direction to Marx
made by Jacques Derrida, before outlining a critical realist/Marxist
alternative.This book employs critical realist philosophy in an
explanatory way to help clarify the concept of hegemony and its relation
to societal processes. This work contributes to recent debates in
social science and political philosophy, developing both the concept of
hegemony itself, and the work of critical realism.

Marxism is dialectical, Novack explains. It considers all phenomena in their development, in their transition from one state to another. And it is materialist, explaining the world as matter in motion that exists prior to and independently of human consciousness.

Friday, August 22, 2014

Something dramatic happened in the late summer and autumn of 2008. The post-Cold War world came to an abrupt end. This was the result of two conjoined crises. First, in its brief war with Georgia in August 2008, Russia asserted its military power to halt the expansion of NATO to its very borders. Secondly, on 15 September 2008 the Wall Street investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed. This precipitated a severe financial crash and helped to push the world economy into the worst slump since the 1930s.
Both crises marked a severe setback for the global power of the United States, which had driven NATO expansion and forced through the liberalization of financial markets. More broadly they challenged the consensus that had reigned since the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989 that a US-orchestrated liberal capitalist order could offer the world peace and prosperity. Already badly damaged by the Iraq debacle, this consensus has now suffered potentially fatal blows.

In Bonfire of Illusions Alex Callinicos explores these twin crises. He traces the credit crunch that developed in 2007-8 to a much more protracted crisis of overaccumulation and profitability that has gripped global capitalism since the late 1960s. He also confronts the interaction between economic and geopolitical events, highlighting the new assertiveness of nation-states and analysing the tense, complex relationship of interdependence and conflict that binds together the US and China. Finally, in response to the revelation that the market is not the solution to the world's problems, Callinicos reviews the prospects for alternatives to capitalism.

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Today, the Indian state claims to embody the values of a stable political democracy, a harmonious territorial unity, and a steadfast religious impartiality. Even many of those critical of the inequalities of Indian society underwrite such claims. "The Indian Ideology" suggests that the roots of the current ills of the Republic go much deeper, historically. They lie, in the way the struggle for independence culminated in the transfer of power from British rule to Congress in a divided subcontinent, not least in the roles played by Gandhi as the great architect of the movement, and Nehru as his appointed successor, in the catastrophe of Partition. Only an honest reckoning with that disaster, Perry Anderson argues, offers an understanding of what has gone wrong with the Republic since Independence. The "Idea of India," widely diffused not only in the official establishment, but more broadly in mainstream intellectual life, side-steps or suppresses many of these uncomfortable realities, past and present. For its own reasons, much of the left has yet to challenge the upshot: what has come to be the neo-Nehruvian consensus of the time. "The Indian Ideology," revisiting the events of over a century in the light of how millions of Indians fare in the Republic today, suggests another way of looking at the country.

Written between 1857 and 1858, the Grundrisse is the first draft of
Marx’s critique of political economy and, thus, also the initial
preparatory work on Capital. Despite its editorial vicissitudes and late
publication, Grundrisse contains numerous reflections on matters that
Marx did not develop elsewhere in his oeuvre and is therefore extremely
important for an overall interpretation of his thought. In this
collection, various international experts in the field, analysing the
Grundrisse on the 150th anniversary of its composition, present a Marx
in many ways radically different from the one who figures in the
dominant currents of twentieth-century Marxism. The book demonstrates
the relevance of the Grundrisse to an understanding of Capital and of
Marx’s theoretical project as a whole, which, as is well known, remained
uncompleted. It also highlights the continuing explanatory power of
Marxian categories for contemporary society and its present
contradictions. With contributions from such scholars as Eric Hobsbawm
and Terrell Carver, and covering subject areas such as political
economy, philosophy and Marxism, this book is likely to become required
reading for serious scholars of Marx across the world.

Sunday, August 17, 2014

In this book, the most thorough account of Marx's theory of alienation yet to have appeared in English, Professor Ollman reconstructs the theory from its constituent parts and offers it as a vantage point from which to view the rest of Marxism. The book further contains a detailed examination of Marx's philosophy of internal relations, the much neglected logical foudation of his method, and provides a systematic account of Marx's conception of human nature. Because of its almost unique concern with helping readers understand Marx's unusual use of language, Alienation has proven very popular in university courses on Marxism on both undergraduate and graduate levels. The first edition was widely reviewed, and in this new edition Professor Ollman replies to his critics in 'More on internal relations,' published here as Appendix II. In addition to this new appendix the author now provides a more systematic discussion of Marx's theory of ideology, elements of which were formerly dispersed throughout the book. He also attempts to set the treatment of political alienation within the broader framework of Marx's theory of the state as a model of how an approach based on internal relations can be used to integrate various apparently contradictory interpretations of Marx's views.

A major and timely re-examination of key areas in the social and
political thought of Hegel and Marx. The editors' extensive introduction
surveys the development of the connection from the Young Hegelians
through the main Marxist thinkers to contemporary debates. Leading
scholars including Terrell Carver, Chris Arthur, and Gary Browning
debate themes such as: the nature of the connection itself; scientific
method; political economy; the Hegelian basis to Marxs' "Doctoral
Dissertation"; human needs; history and international relations.

This groundbreaking collection surveys
current research on Marx and Marxism from a variety of perspectives.
Setting forward an unconventional range of questions for discussion, the
book develops key ideas, such as the theory of history, controversies
about justice and the latest textual scholarship on The German Ideology.
Written by Japanese scholars, the volume affords western readers a
glimpse for the first time, of the results of many years’ debates and
discussion.
Following the long tradition of Japanese
interest in Marx, the book draws on the relationship between that and
radical changes in local political context, as well as the economic and
political development represented by Japan. Over the course of the
chapters, Marx is rescued from ‘orientalism’, evaluated as a socialist
thinker, revisited as a theorist of capitalist development and heralded
as a necessary corrective to modern economics. Of particular interest
are the major scholarly revisions to the ‘standard’ historical accounts
of Marx’s work on the Communist Manifesto, his relationship to
the contemporary theories of Louis Blanc and P.J. Proudhon, and new
information about how he and Engels worked together.
This
landmark work opens up a world of Japanese critical engagement and
lively scholarship that will appeal to anyone interested in Marx and
Marxism.

Andrew Collier is the boldest defender of objectivity - in science,
knowledge, thought, action, politics, morality and religion. In this
tribute and acknowledgement of the influence his work has had on a wide
readership, his colleagues show that they have been stimulated by his
thinking and offer challenging responses. This wide-ranging book covers
key areas with which defenders of objectivity often have to engage.
Sections are devoted to the following: * objectivity of value* objectivity and everyday knowledge* objectivity in political economy* objectivity and reflexivity* objectivity postmodernism and feminism* objectivity and natureThe
diverse contributions range from social and political thought to
philosophy, reflecting the central themes of Collier's work.

What does Marx mean by 'alienation'? What role does the concept play in
his critique of capitalism and his vision of a future society?

Marx and Alienation
deals in depth with some of the most important philosophical
assumptions of Marx's work. It sets Marx's account of alienation and its
overcoming in the context of the Hegelian philosophy from which it
derives, and discusses it in relation to contemporary debates and
controversies. It challenges other recent accounts of Marx's theory, and
shows that knowledge of Hegel's philosophy is essential for an
understanding of central themes in Marx's philosophy.

Marx and Alienation
explains and discusses Marx's ideas in an original and accessible
fashion and makes a major contribution to Marxist philosophy.

This second edition of McLellan's comprehensive selection of Marx's
writings includes carefully selected extracts from the whole range of
Marx's political, philosophical, and economic thought. Each section of
the book deals with a different period of Marx's life, allowing readers
to trace the development of his thought from his early years as a
student and political journalist in Germany up through the final letters
he wrote in the early 1880s. A fully updated editorial introduction and
bibliography has been included for each extract in this new edition.

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Marx was a highly original and polymathic thinker, unhampered by
disciplinary boundaries, whose intellectual influence has been enormous.
Yet in the wake of the collapse of Marxism-Leninism in Eastern Europe
the question arises as to how important his work really is for us now.
An important dimension of this volume is to place Marx's writings in
their historical context and to separate what he actually said from what
others (in particular, Engels) interpreted him as saying. Informed by
current debates and new perspectives, the volume provides a
comprehensive coverage of all the major areas to which Marx made
significant contributions.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Few
thinkers have been declared irrelevant and out of date with such
frequency as Karl Marx. Hardly a decade since his death has gone by in
which establishment critics have not announced the death of his theory.
Whole forests have been felled to produce the paper necessary to fuel
this effort to marginalize the coauthor of The Communist Manifesto.

And
yet, despite their best efforts to bury him again and again, Marx’s
specter continues to haunt his detractors more than a century after his
passing. As another international economic collapse pushes ever growing
numbers out of work, and a renewed wave of popular revolt sweeps across
the globe, a new generation is learning to ignore all the taboos and
scorn piled upon Marx’s ideas and rediscovering that the problems he
addressed in his time are remarkably similar to those of our own.

In
this engaging and accessible introduction, Alex Callinicos demonstrates
that Marx’s ideas hold an enduring relevance for today’s activists
fighting against poverty, inequality, oppression, environmental
destruction, and the numerous other injustices of the capitalist system.

Friday, August 1, 2014

Available in English for the first time, Hegel and the Freedom of
Moderns revives discussion of the major political and philosophical
tenets underlying contemporary liberalism through a revolutionary
interpretation of G. W. F. Hegel’s thought. Domenico Losurdo, one of the
world’s leading Hegelians, reveals that the philosopher was fully
engaged with the political controversies of his time. In so doing, he
shows how the issues addressed by Hegel in the nineteenth century
resonate with many of the central political concerns of today, among
them questions of community, nation, liberalism, and freedom. Based on
an examination of Hegel’s entire corpus—including manuscripts, lecture
notes, different versions of texts, and letters—Losurdo locates the
philosopher’s works within the historical contexts and political
situations in which they were composed.

Hegel and the Freedom of
Moderns persuasively argues that the tug of war between “conservative”
and “liberal” interpretations of Hegel has obscured and distorted the
most important aspects of his political thought. Losurdo unravels this
misleading dualism and provides an illuminating discussion of the
relation between Hegel’s political philosophy and the thinking of Karl
Marx and Friedrich Engels. He also discusses Hegel’s ideas in relation
to the pertinent writings of other major figures of modern political
philosophy such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Locke, Edmund Burke, John
Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, Karl Popper, Norberto Bobbio, and
Friedrich Hayek.